In a conventional personal computer or media device, the main operating system and applications have access to storage, such as hard disk drives, system memory, etc. to enable playback of media, retrieval of e-mail, etc. However running the device in this mode uses a significant amount of power. In order to conserve power, conventional computers and media devices reduce power consumption by entering ACPI power states S3 or S4. However, when entering these states, the computer or media device is rendered unusable. User interaction is required to wake up these devices and bring it back to ACPI power state S0, which is the fully on power state, in order to resume use.
Other devices attempt to reduce power consumption by providing low power components (e.g., CPUs, hard drives, etc.). However these devices suffer from poor performance and use hardware components that are often not suitable for CPU-intensive tasks, such as video playback. Users are also frustrated because these devices fail to provide a significant reduction in power consumption over conventional devices when performing intensive tasks.